I've thought about that you are very right but I'm not sure what other way to go there is?
I'd like to see some in vitro work looking at mitochondrial function, redox parameters, gene expression, and stem cell differentiation. All of this could be done fairly quickly by people who already have the assay systems set up. I'd like to see some chemical analysis to figure out exactly what the structure of the active compound(s) is/are. I suspect there are more than one active structure, since olive oil is heterogeneous in terms of its fatty acid content, and c60 can be multiply substituted in a variety of ways. It would be great if someone could separate the various species, and test each independently. Some are undoubtedly better than others, and some might even be harmful, or at least not helpful. I've been told by one fullerene chemist that characterization of fullerene isomers is hard... but it sure seems like some grad student could get a thesis or two out of this work.
Everything I've mentioned is aimed at learning things quickly. Lifespan tests in higher organisms take a long time, although starting with 18 month old mice is quite brilliant, since we are already seeing them living longer than any of the controls in a large, well-tended colony of similar animals in the NIA studies. It remains to be seen if we will see extreme LE starting at that age or not. We certainly need at least one reasonable-sized controlled rodent experiment. Returning to the theme of learning things quickly, we could do lifespan experiments in shorter-lives species like worms (c. elegans), flies (d. melanogaster), or maybe even single celled organisms. All this would require someone with expertise in raising such organisms. The relevance of non-mammalian results to humans would not be as great as with long-lived higher mammals, but we could learn things.
Experiments with humans get tricky because of human subject rules, but I could imagine some under-the-radar work that we could do. We could do before/after bloodwork that looked at a variety of redox parameters. All that would take is some willing subjects and a lot of money. (probably in the vicinity of $1500 per person for two panels) We might be able to find some exercise physiologists in the athletics community who could look at parameters like oxygen utilization while steering clear of bothersome institutional review committees. The before/after physical performance data that mikefromnaples generated was quite good. I would love to see some more of that. We would need people in good condition, already trained on each exercise so that there wouldn't be a confounding training effect, and finally, we would need them to be fullerene-naive, or at least to have abstained from it for a year or two, depending on how much they'd been taking. I'd rather see people who'd never used it for that kind of experiment. Boris Sala, the Dutch rowing champion, is running a loose version of this kind of experiment, but I think he's just handing it out to people at his gym rather than organizing the kind of data that we'd like to see. Something may yet come from that, but if we had half a dozen athletes, we could probably do something publishable. More people would be better.
Lest I go on all night, I'll end with a few thoughts about a controlled rodent experiment. We need someone who could run a small colony of animals. I wouldn't have a problem with Longecity paying for supplies for such an experiment, but it is a huge commitment of time, not to mention space. The person would need to be in a stable housing situation for the following four years. I wouldn't feel right asking someone to take that on unless they were already committed to the colony, like Creveterebelle.